Claudia Rankine's Citizen: An American Lyric
Citizen: An American Lyric, written by Claudia Rankine, is a hybrid book. The book consists of seven chapters, each chapter detailing different microaggressions, interspersed with images of various paintings, drawings, sculptures, and screen grabs.
Chapter III starts off with another with another short interaction, similarity to the conversations in Chapter I. As you rush to meet a friend in a distant neighborhood, the friend says you are late “you nappy-headed ho” (41). Rankine continues by explaining how this friend “has never before referred to you like this in your presence, never before code-switched in this manner” (41). Following this conversation is a photo of the Rutgers women’s basketball team, from 2010. Then you assume that “her …show more content…
The book consists of seven sections, accompanied by images of paintings, drawings, sculptures, and screen grabs. Although each section is a little different and what they cover they are strung together with consistent themes and prosaic tendencies.
Claudia Rankine and John Lucas have seven situations based on the situations in the book, Citizen: An American Lyric. Each situation outlines what Rankine wrote in an intense type of way. The one video that hit me the hardest was situation number nine. The situation takes place in an art gallery with a few chairs and three pictures. The first portion of the video there’s a conversation going on where a lady tells her friends that this wanted to know which one was more intelligent, but instead she said which one is more white, and then there’s laughter, with a song in the background called, “Niggers Love Watermelon, Ha, Ha, Ha” And on the wall there is a picture of a black woman, just smiling like anyone would in a picture. Then the next part of the video the second picture on the wall there a person covered in a white paste with a spoon eating the white paste off themselves, this turns out to be a commercial for Little Babies Ice Cream. Finally, the last video comes on the wall in the third slot, it’s a pro-white commercial, where people are bleaching their skin to look more white, and the talking in the background is just saying how happy people are that they’re white, and how being white is the best thing. This situation was so complex and very eye opening. At the end of the video it said whiteness, Inc. this video showed how white washed the world truly
Chapter III starts off with another with another short interaction, similarity to the conversations in Chapter I. As you rush to meet a friend in a distant neighborhood, the friend says you are late “you nappy-headed ho” (41). Rankine continues by explaining how this friend “has never before referred to you like this in your presence, never before code-switched in this manner” (41). Following this conversation is a photo of the Rutgers women’s basketball team, from 2010. Then you assume that “her …show more content…
The book consists of seven sections, accompanied by images of paintings, drawings, sculptures, and screen grabs. Although each section is a little different and what they cover they are strung together with consistent themes and prosaic tendencies.
Claudia Rankine and John Lucas have seven situations based on the situations in the book, Citizen: An American Lyric. Each situation outlines what Rankine wrote in an intense type of way. The one video that hit me the hardest was situation number nine. The situation takes place in an art gallery with a few chairs and three pictures. The first portion of the video there’s a conversation going on where a lady tells her friends that this wanted to know which one was more intelligent, but instead she said which one is more white, and then there’s laughter, with a song in the background called, “Niggers Love Watermelon, Ha, Ha, Ha” And on the wall there is a picture of a black woman, just smiling like anyone would in a picture. Then the next part of the video the second picture on the wall there a person covered in a white paste with a spoon eating the white paste off themselves, this turns out to be a commercial for Little Babies Ice Cream. Finally, the last video comes on the wall in the third slot, it’s a pro-white commercial, where people are bleaching their skin to look more white, and the talking in the background is just saying how happy people are that they’re white, and how being white is the best thing. This situation was so complex and very eye opening. At the end of the video it said whiteness, Inc. this video showed how white washed the world truly